Monkeywrenching

Last weekend I ran a one day workshop up north on understanding and influencing the political system. The session was part of the Kaipatiki EcoFest and was held at the Matakana Hall. A big thanks to Trish Allen for getting me up there and organising everything. We had about 12 people there on the day, as a few had to drop out at the last minute for various reasons. The great thing for me was that the people who came were the kinds of people who will really make use of what they learned. Many were local community and environmental activists and it was a real joy to work with them. As usual, I learned a great deal from the discussions. Perhaps the best feedback I got was from one participant who said, as she left at the end of the day, that she had come along with a bunch of excuses in mind as she had intended to leave at lunchtime! So much for making plans I guess. Since the weekend I have had some really positive feedback in emails from people who were there and some offers to help to get the workshop into High Schools – which is something I would really like to do, especially given the low rates of participation in the last elections. I need to do more work to fit the workshop into school timetabling and link the learnings to the curriculum but I think there is a lot of potential in the idea. On my way home I managed to catch up with Graeme North, one of the founders of modern earth-building in Aotearoa. It is always a pleasure to talk with someone so knowledgeable about their subject and still so passionate about creating accessible, non-toxic buildings that arise out of local materials and the local community. Graeme has a great built-in bullshit detector so it is always interesting to ask his opinion about various things going on around the place! All in all a great trip, and worth it despite the long drive from the Eastern Bay of Plenty.